SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 16 January 2026
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
Site updated on 14 January 2026
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
von Däniken, Erich
(1935-2026) Swiss author of a series of purportedly nonfiction books, beginning with Erinnerungen an die Zukunft (1968; trans Michael Heron as Chariots of the Gods? 1969), which, based on a mass of often suspect and internally inconsistent data, argues that the Earth was visited by at least one Alien spacefaring race before and at the dawn of historical time; thus, for example, the Great Pyramid of ...
Adams, Scott
(1957-2026) US author and cartoonist best known for the Dilbert strip published from 1989, which when at its best superbly (in terms of concept and accuracy of Satire rather than quality of drawing) satirized contemporary office life and corporate incompetence. As with most ambitious modern comic strips, it segues frequently into sf and fantasy tropes – such as Robot office workers, wish-fulfilling ...
Lee, Fonda
(1979- ) Canadian author, in USA from early adulthood; her first novel, Zeroboxer (2015), is a Young Adult adventure set in a Space Opera universe with Faster Than Light travel, whose young protagonist, a professional athlete (see Games and Sports) whose gladiatorial entrepreneurial skills expose him to a larger world ...
Haedicke, Paul
(1852-1903) German soldier and journalist who spent much of his career in the US, usually as a foreign correspondent for German papers; his sf novel, The Equalities of Para-Para, Written from the Dictations of George Rambler, M.D., F.R.G.S. (1895), set in a hidden, egalitarian Lost World in darkest Africa, is a Satire on the uniformitarian implications of a socialist Utopia whose egalitarianism ...
Shaw, Stanley
(1870-? ) Australian author in whose sf novel, The Locust Horde (1924), the eponymous swarm consists not of insects on the rampage but Russian women and children, who are involved in a Near Future conspiracy to flood America with immigrants. [JC]
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...